Curaçao has started its World Cup buildup in Noordwijk, and the scene around Dick Advocaat’s squad is far removed from the usual hush of an international camp. Since Monday, the team has been training at SJC Noordwijk and staying at Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin, with fans allowed to watch every session up close.
The attention has been intense because Curaçao has done something no other country has managed: it qualified for the World Cup as the smallest nation ever to reach the tournament. With about 160,000 inhabitants, roughly comparable to Amersfoort, the island has suddenly become a talking point far beyond the Dutch coast. For Advocaat, 78, the rare run also gives him one more chance to manage on a stage that normally belongs to much larger countries.
On Thursday evening, hundreds of fans turned up in Noordwijk, and the players were greeted like pop stars when they walked onto the training field. Andaye Delauney, 46, stood by the dug-out waiting for a selfie with Advocaat, a small scene that captured the scale of the attention around a team few outside the Caribbean had followed closely before this month.
Vincent Schildkamp, the team’s press chief, said the atmosphere in Noordwijk was “veel ontspannener” than at an Oranje press day, and that calm stood in contrast to the roerige build-up that had surrounded the squad before it arrived. That rougher period is not visible here. What is visible is a team being watched, filmed and cheered as if the World Cup had already begun.
Curaçao’s qualification also had a practical edge to it. The island benefited from the fact that the United States, Mexico and Canada had already qualified automatically as hosts, then beat Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Bermuda on the way through. Only one player in Advocaat’s squad was actually born in Curaçao, a reminder that the team’s identity is broader than the island itself and that its rise has been built across a wider diaspora.
That is why Noordwijk matters now. Fans can walk into the sessions, the players can feel the noise, and Curaçao can measure how quickly its new status has turned into global curiosity. What remains unclear is the next step on the calendar, but the message from this week is already plain: the smallest country ever to reach the World Cup is no longer a footnote.
